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So over on A Voice for Men, young Jason Gregory seems faintly jealous that young women who put up dating profiles online tend to get flooded with messages — and the occasional dick pic — from horny guys.
F]ree cock is everywhere. Men give it away like it’s worthless. … I doubt that it is unusual at all for a woman to get 300 messages in her inbox from men who are desperate for female affection, approval, and sex. There is no doubt in my mind that men send “dick-pics” and clamor, bother, and sometimes harass women for their affections and attentions.
But Jason feels no sympathy for young women who put up profiles hoping to meet some nice young fellow who’s also into Sherlock and Neil Gaiman and Indian food and instead get messages from guys who introduce themselves by expressing a desire to ejaculate in their hair.
No, Jason is angry because he’s convinced all these offers of “free cock” only serve to make the women of the world into snooty-stuck stuck-up so-and-sos who think they’re all that and a folder full of dick pics.
All you men who give it away, all you do is reinforce the entitlement mentality of women who believe that their being present is plenty. You reinforce the idea that women don’t owe anything to the relationship—that they deserve a free-ride of cocks and that they don’t even have to break a sweat.
Jason, I should add, means this last bit literally. He’s resentful that when he allegedly engages in the act of coitus he has to do all the work while his alleged partners allegedly lie there like inflatable love-dolls.
Anyhoo,.Jason has a plan to take these stuck-up ladies down a peg or two: A cock strike.
Yep, he wants men to start saying “no” to women who are interested in them, just to see how they like it. But he doesn’t want them to just say no. He wants them to be giant dicks about it.
Try telling a girl no. Tell her, after she makes it clear that she wants your cock, that you’re not interested in giving it to her. Tell her that she isn’t interesting, that her soul is dog-shit and that she has nothing to offer other than boobs and booty, that she is a piece of shit and a total failure as a human being, that you don’t find her attractive and that she isn’t even good enough to be a cum-bucket. Tell her that she is never going to be any good at sucking cock and that she needs to stop pretending that she is doing any favors and learn to compensate for her inadequacies by becoming “kinky.” Tell her that her vapid life of shoes and pop-culture and materialism are soulless pursuits of dog-shit. Watch what happens. If you Jez-ladies wanna know what “hostile” means, see this rejected woman.
Emphasis mine.
A Voice for Men, you may recall, sees itself as leading the most important civil rights movement of the 21st century. I am sure Jason Gregory’s post here will be remembered alongside Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail as a classic in civil rights literature.
EDIT: I added a couple more “allegedlys” to a sentence I thought needed them.
buttboil, demonstrating idiocy like we’ve never seen it from his kind before. ::rolls eyes::
So, just to be clear, it’s bullying if we tell JoJo to piss off after multiple situations in which he’s used language that upsets people, been asked to refrain from doing so, declared his refusal to do so, and informed us that he’s not talking to us unless we let him use as many potentially offensive terms as he wants, but if SnorkMaiden tells us that we shouldn’t do that and should stop “getting the vapors” then that’s, what? Totally reasonable and polite, because the attempt to get people to comply with your preferred conversational norms is done in a passive-aggressive rather than a direct way?
@ grumpcatisagirl
A friend of mine did one of those activities/dating clubs and liked it. It was based around going on massive pub crawls, so big surprise people get to know each other fairly quickly there, but the reason she thought it worked well was that they were also doing a treasure hunt type thing at the same time, in groups that were mixed in terms of sex and orientation, so it didn’t feel too date-like and pressured at the beginning. People just got to know each other and then formed off into smaller groups or pairs later, or exchanged info and then followed up afterwards. That particular club would only have worked for athletic, outdoorsy people who like to drink, but the general principle seems sound.
In general I think common interests/shared activities are one of the best and least awkward ways to meet people.
Also, extra enterprising people can do stuff like that themselves. Another friend organized a thing where she got a bunch of single people who couldn’t be with their families together at Christmas and had them make or buy seasonal food and deliver it to local homeless shelters. Some of the people who met via that ended up pairing up, and people made new friends too. Again the key seems to be that dating isn’t the only goal and there’s no immediate pressure because people are doing other stuff at the same time as meeting people,
@cassandrakitty et al.,
Who is “we” here? I’ve been participating here (and sending my fair share of donations to David BTW) for a year, and I’ve never overcome the sense that I was an uninvited guest. I appreciate there is a handful of dominant members who set the standards here, and I try to conform, but this would be a more welcoming and less “cliquey” space if some of you “regulars” would consider that you do not necessarily speak for all readers.
“We” in this case would be the people who told JoJo off, since we were the people SnorkMaiden was telling to stop doing that.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s intentional, but there’s definitely a feeling that a few of the regulars go way back and are BFFs, and it’s a little intimidating trying to join in. I’ve been commenting for a couple of years, and I still don’t feel like part of the group.
That being said, a lot of the words people get “dogpiled” for using are anti-oppression 101, and they’d probably get dogpiled in any progressive space. Freemage was as polite as one could possibly be about a word that people have been asked not to use on an almost daily basis lately, and JoJo still pitched a fit like people were being terribly mean for no reason. That was pretty inappropriate.
So we (the editorial we) should just ableism slide because some people don’t think it’s a big deal? As in, be like everywhere else on the whole wide internet?
To be clear, my objection here is to three things.
1. The idea that people shouldn’t call someone out when they say something ableist. People are going to do that, because there are people here who get upset when they see those words used.
2. The idea that “let me use whatever language I want or I’m going to take my toys and go home” is a reasonable thing to say, and shouldn’t be responded to in a negative way.
3. The idea that if group of people A all try to control what can and can’t be said by openly calling out someone who’s, say, calling people crazy, then that’s bullying and horrible, but if person B also tries to control what can and can’t be said, just in a more roundabout way (and by saying that the people in group A have “the vapors”, which is just as rude as what was said to JoJo), then that’s totally OK because..?
In terms of there being a core group who’ve known each other for a while, and that being obvious, I’m not sure what to do about that. It’s not like people can just pretend that they haven’t known each other for a while, and there are some people who know each other offline too, so sometimes they refer to that. Which, yeah, might feel weird for other people, I’m just not sure what can be done about that other than saying “don’t talk about what happened that time you met offline, or talk about stuff that happened on the blog years ago”.
As a newbie I kind of like that there’s an established group of regulars – it makes the place feel “home-y”, and a little bit safer with regard to trolls. I normally don’t comment on public forums at all, but having a consistent base of articulate people here that regularly go toe-to-toe with the fouler comment-board elements encouraged me to do so. That being said, I am a little afraid of the day that I run afoul of one of the big group myself (not that I want to or see any reason to, but language slip-ups are easy to make >_<) so I can see how that would be intimidating; however it feels less like a cliquishness thing to me and more like a "these people have been around feminism longer and are better at it" thing .
I find that I censor myself while on this forum. But I don’t see it as a bad thing, certain common phrases or terms really aren’t appropriate, but are especially inappropriate in certain spaces. It’s a lot easier to self-censor too when typing. I’ll catch myself thinking a word and stopping myself from typing it to think of something better. It’s really more about learning social skills and better ways to communicate a similar idea or sentiment. If I find myself offended by something (like being called out for uncool things) I try to think about what bothers me before reacting. I’ve also learned by reading people’s responses to certain words and made a mental check list of shit-people-dont-want-to-hear on this forum.
(Points up)
And the thing is, everyone does that. I don’t personally never found the word “crazy” offensive, and didn’t think twice about using it until people pointed out how ableist it was. Now I know it upsets some people here, and why, so I don’t use it. Why is that so hard an adjustment to make?
Look, who doesn’t put foot in mouth on occasion? I’ve been here, what, over a year now, maybe longer, and I still do it occasionally (yesterday f’rinst). Yeah, it took me a while to feel I belonged, at first, but I feel a damn sight more comfortable here than in the other spaces I’ve tried. Feministe I’m still iffy about because it’s so serious, and Pharyngula was such a not-for-me place I left it. This place is the one I feel most welcome and like I belong, which is obviously just *my* experience and not other people’s.
But any place with regulars who’ve been around a while has the same thing, and what are people supposed to do about it? Regulars do make the effort to be welcoming to good-faith posters here (how many sites have a welcome package?) and it’s far more inclusive than, say, the two sites I mentioned (IME). It’s a matter of time, and yes, delurking.
And after all that … JoJo had plenty of supportive and welcoming comments in the time he was here. I get that he’s in a vulnerable state, as Snork Maiden mentioned, and I’m pretty damn sure other people did. But is it so fucking hard to apologise and watch one’s language? Do we have to have this same argument every damn week? That’s another reason people who’ve been here longer than a frigging month are getting short with this, because the ableism is coming up all the goddamn time.
“It’s a few years since some dipshit tried to chat me up in public – planting himself next to me on the train, ugh. “I’m going to meet my boyfriend” didn’t work (this was before Mr K and I were married) so I changed carriages. “I just want to be friendly!” he protested. “I’m not interested in talking,” I said, and left. Fortunately he didn’t follow me. Maybe he did just want to chat, but he was being personal and ignored Every Fucking Message. That killed his chances of a chat right there – and I do chat with people on the train often enough.”
I had a similar experience on the subway. A guy just started chatting with me and asked me where I was going, I told him to my boyfriends place. He wasn’t bad though, but it’s always so awkward when someone starts talking to you because in the back of my mind I’m thinking “If I keep talking to him this guy is going to think I’m interested, but if I tell him I’m not right away he’s going to be offended or think I must be full of myself for thinking ANY guy that chats with me is automatically hitting on me”. It does make me feel a bit uncomfortable.
But not all of my experiences with random strangers are bad, maybe it’s just Canada but I do find there’s a fair number of guys that are pretty good about being let down gently. Usually I get the response “well he’s a lucky guy” and I say Yuup! and there seems to be no hurt feelings. It’s usually the late night crowd that is particular egregious about invading personal space/boundaries.
I’m guessing there are more than a few long-time users who feel a bit left out. I’m a very new commenter, however, so I really don’t know enough about the community to make any good suggestions on what to do.
Also, while I really like this website and what it does, reading about misogynists tends to make my depression flare up, so I’ve been trying to come here less often.
I said something inappropriate once, shortly after starting to comment here.
I was told it was inappropriate.
I apologized for having done so.
Apology was accepted.
It was pretty basic human interaction 101.
Thanks, freemage and Cassandra. I actually do a lot of pursuing my hobbies and volunteering but the thing is many of my hobbies (and my profession) tend to mostly attract a lot of other women and gay men. Just thought it might be helpful to look into something where there was actually an eye on the gender balance of the participants (since it’s heterosexual dating I’m interested in), but there was a lower risk of the predatory/creepy behavior that I’ve been burned by in online dating.
I honestly have no idea who the long time commenters are on this forum. I just kinda know who comments more often than others from being on here every day LOL it’s a bad habit now.
But on the plus side, it’s great that I can pursue my hobbies and interests even though I’m a SPINSTER. I can make for a full life that way, with a man or no.
cupisnique, you have been assimilated! Fear the Femborg! 😀
Yeah, my interactions with random people on the trains are pretty innocuous or actually pleasant, mostly. It’s usually just “train conversations” – ie. the railways have stuffed up AGAIN so people talk about that. Sometimes someone will ask what I’m knitting, though that’s women rather than men. Mostly I’m asleep on the train in the morning, like about %50 of the passengers. 😛
For long-term readers or anyone else feeling left out – I’m starting to get a bit exasperated by this. It’s down to people to comment more often if they want to be known! What are frequent commenters meant to do, sit saying please please delurk so we can make people we don’t know feel more welcome? Yes, I know full well people aren’t always up for it, or don’t feel like it, and have all sorts of stuff going on that just makes it too difficult or painful. Those are not the situations I’m talking about. But it’s silly to hardly ever comment then complain about feeling excluded.
Hmm as a newish person it seems all right here to me? I can only speak for myself, but I’m used to places that are extremely hostile or just soundly ignore me so this is a step up, lol.
Oh, I meant in general – the calling-out that specifically happened here today was totally appropriate, and if something similar happened to me I would take it as a learning experience, just a fairly intimidating one.
So I guess I was saying I can see both sides of the matter, but I like the way things are, not the least of which because this makes the comments on this site a safer-than-usual place for people with mental illnesses and the gender or sexually non-conforming. Sorry if I was unclear of prissy-sounding, auggz – I have a bit of trouble getting points across sometimes.
Any calling out can feel intimidating, it goes with the territory. I feel the same way. But the people who’re complaining again and again about it are the ones driving other people off the site with their ableism, and that pisses me off mightily.
Also, I think the community here does a pretty decent job calling out others for ableism. Delurkers/newcomers are given the welcome package, which has a polite message about why ableism is problematic. The only reason any of us ever get irritated by ableism on occasion is that we keep asking folks to not be ableist and in response they often double down.